Recently, travel writer Ed Placidi shared an article about the colorful, exotic street foods of Sri Lanka, enabling us to imagine how flavorful it all was. Now, he brings us a different kind of food story from that trip in Sri Lanka – the day a Pachyderm stole his lunch! Again, Ed takes us right along with him, slime and all.

This would be no ordinary visit by an elephant for writer, Ed Placidi.

The assault came suddenly. We were caught completely by surprise. But we realized afterwards that we had been hoodwinked by a unique pro of the animal kingdom who preys on unsuspecting humans.

The morning had started slowly. We were driving though Yala, one of Sri Lanka’s national parks brimming with wildlife. We had spotted a number of smaller creatures and a variety of avian in the early hours of the new day, but now we had our sights set on the biggest animals in the park, Elephas Maximus, the Asian elephant.  Our guide was on the radio to colleagues, and made stops to confer with other guides passing by about sightings, but none had caught even a distant glimpse of an elephant that morning.

Frustrated, my guide, Janaka Bandarce, stopped for a betel palm nut fix. He offered me a chew, but when I declined he laughed and said it feels good, revealing the typical black-stained teeth of a long-time user. Back underway, we plied tracks through the dense scrubland, passed huge marshes filled with feeding birds and wild buffalo wallowing in the mud and encountered huge monolithic rock outcroppings – but the only signs of elephants were droppings.

Powering through a small stream and up a steep incline, we emerged into flat, higher ground ‒ and suddenly our quest was realized:  two large adults loomed in front of us, just a few feet off the dirt road in a small clearing. We shut off the engine and watched them in silence for several minutes as they engaged in a back-and-forth dance with each other, both repeatedly walking a few steps forward and then a few steps back.

Then one began to approach us, slowly, nonchalantly, while the other kept his distance, eying us suspiciously. Before we knew it, he was standing alongside the cab of the safari vehicle, poking his trunk around the door and rearview mirror. Janaka literally could have reached out and touched him.

The elephant gets too close for comfort – and that’s not the worst of it!

Without any warning, he suddenly made his move, plunging his long, powerful trunk (which has more than 40,000 muscles) into the cab and began flailing about trying to grab something – anything – it could get its trunk around.  I lunged to secure my day pack and camera, which were sitting on the seat and dashboard, pulling them against my body as his trunk knocked me in my face, arms and legs.

Janaka kept his cool, gently trying to contain the thrashing of the pachyderm’s trunk while urging him to be calm with a soothing voice – but to no avail. This animal was on a mission. It had done this before. It knew what it was doing.

It was 10 seconds of chaos, and then it ended as abruptly as it had started. The elephant rolled his trunk around the plastic lunch bag on the dashboard, had it firmly in its grip, and then yanked his trunk out of the cab, turned and – no exaggeration – galloped away at a pace that might have beaten Triple Crown winner Justified. The thief had fled as if on a mad dash from the law.

It was over just like that. Janaka and I looked at each other and burst into hysterical laughter. What had just happened?  He celebrated the once-in-a-lifetime experience with a betel nut hit, while I cursed myself  for not getting a photo or video of the robbery – but it had happened so fast, I rationalized, and besides I was fixated on protecting my possessions from being lost forever.

The harrowing experience called for a little stress relief from the betel nut.

It was then that I realized I had been slimed. Damp brown elephant snot covered my bare right leg. I guess I should have worn long pants that day rather than shorts.

The irony of the wild and bizarre incident is that the big brute, for all his plotting and planning, got next to nothing from the heist. The plastic bag contained only a Styrofoam container with just a few remnants of our lunch. For all we know, however, maybe he ate the plastic and Styrofoam and considered it a delicacy.

We had seen critters even before entering the official boundary of Yala. The quantity and variety of wildlife seen on just a morning tour of the park was spectacular:  Iguana, monitor lizards, wild boar, Sambar deer, mongooses, macaque and langur monkeys, crocodiles and, after the “incident,” many more elephants, not to mention numerous birds from the Green Bee Eater, Black Crowned Night Heron, Crested Serpent Eagle, Peacock and Sri Lanka Junglefowl (also known as the wild chicken) to the Black Winged Stilt, Sri Lanka Gray Hornbill, Painted Stork, Red Wattled Lapwing and Baya Weaver, whose large, teardrop-shaped nests hang languidly from trees.

It’s easy to see why Yala is Sri Lanka’s most visited national park. For me, Yala is unforgettable ‒ because seared in my memory is the vision of that hightailing, thieving pachyderm, his large rear end juxtaposed with a tiny flapping tail, as he madly galloped away into the bush with his prize rolled up in his trunk.

— Story & Photos by Edward Placidi

Hungry for more? Let Ed guide you to the best meals around the streets of Sri Lanka.